English Rural Society, 1500–1800
Essays in Honour of Joan Thirsk

Written largely by her former research students, this book honours the varied and creative career of Joan Thirsk.

John Chartres (Edited by), David Hey (Edited by)

9780521031561, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 November 2006

400 pages
21.5 x 13.7 x 2.3 cm, 0.519 kg

This book honours the varied and creative career of Joan Thirsk, Fellow of the British Academy and former Reader in Economic History in the University of Oxford. The chapters have been written largely by Dr Thirsk's former research students, and the diversity of themes covered reflects her own diversity of academic interest. The subjects range from landlords and land management to the position of women in early modern England and the origins of the Sheffield cutlery and allied trades. Supplemented with a full bibliography and personal and academic appreciations, this volume will serve as a fine tribute to Joan Thirsk's work in English social, economic, agrarian and local history in the early modern period.

Acknowledgements
Introduction John Chartres and David Hey
1. Joan Thirsk: a personal appreciation Alan Everitt
2. The Verneys as enclosing landlords, 1600–1800 John Broad
3. Estate management in eighteenth-century England: the Lowther-Spedding relationship in Cumberland John Beckett
4. 'Vain projects': the Crown and its copyholders in the reign of James I Richard Hoyle
5. Rural society and agricultural change: Ombersley 1580–1700 Peter Large
6. The limitations of the probate inventory Margaret Spufford
7. Freebench and free enterprise: widows and their property in two Berkshire villages Barbara Todd
8. Wives and wills 1558–1700 Mary Prior
9. The horse trade of Shropshire in the early modern period Peter Edwards
10. 'An essay on manures': changing attitudes to fertilization in England, 1500–1800 Donald Woodward
11. Root crops and the feeding of London's poor in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries Malcolm Thick
12. 'Thirty years on': progress towards integration amongst the immigrant population of Elizabethan London Andrew Pettegree
13. No English Calvados? English distillers and the cider industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries John Chartres
14. The origins and early growth of the Hallamshire cutlery and allied trades David Hey
15. Joan Thirsk: a bibliography Margery Tranter
Index.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ], Rural communities [JFSF], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], British & Irish history [HBJD1]